Commentary: It’s Time to Talk Seriously About Facebook’s Awesome Power

Facebook has been quietly experimenting with its power to influence everything from the way we express our emotions to how likely we are to vote –and the world has finally noticed. Now, it seems, is the time to have a debate that’s long overdue: What are the obligations of companies like Facebook and Google, which have the power to shape our collective reality?

Over the weekend, outrage over an experiment Facebook conducted in 2012 bloomed on the Internet. The week-long experiment found that seeing more happy stuff on Facebook makes you slightly more likely to post something happy on the site; the inverse is also true. Researchers found no evidence–and this has been widely misreported–that Facebook actually changed anyone’s emotional state.

Setting aside the ethics of this experiment — some find it horrifying while others think it’s no big deal – its results demonstrate something important:

There may be no company in history with as much power to influence what we think and feel as Facebook.

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